As a kid, I fondly remember my trips to the Webster library to check out piles of books. I attempted to “read” my way up and down the aisles of the junior department…literally. The images that I would conjure up as I read C. S. Lewis, Madeline L’Engle and Louisa May Alcott became my own little imaginary domains, and if there were illustrations or if I saw a movie associated with the title, it would never match what I would “see” in my head and would often disappoint me.
Now I don’t believe that pictures or movies are a bad thing – I have hundreds of pictures and piles of mini DVD cassettes – but I think that we sometimes overuse this visual medium and tend to not use the written word. One of the big reasons why I don’t have any pictures on this blog is to force me to write about my personal experiences instead of just depict them. I also keep a calendar for each of my kids where I jot down things that they say or do to supplement our scrapbooks and video libraries – I’m not that much of a wordsmith, but it definitely adds a different dimension to our memories.
But…I was tempted to break my own rule after our “family fun” experience planting our little backyard vegetable garden last weekend. I thought that it would be easier to “show” the progression of our planting adventure rather than try to explain it, but I’ll give it a shot.
Ben dug up the grass clods in the unseasonably hot weather, while Madi followed behind, wearing her pink garden gloves and using her pink trowel to scoop up minuscule shovelfuls of dirt and toss it over her shoulder, mostly all over me. Parker, of course, wanted to use Madi’s shovel so we had to get a different shovel for him and he tried to mimic her actions, sticking the shovel in the dirt and throwing even more minuscule clods of dirt into the air. He then went over to Madi’s garden stone from last year, picked it up, and carried it over to the wheelbarrow to put it in. I looked over to see little ants crawling all over the stone and him – yuck – but he was completely unconcerned as I swatted the ants off with my dirt-covered hands and smeared even a bigger mess all over his overalls.
Later, as Madi and I planted (and Parker tried to help until Ben distracted him with the swingset), she precisely allotted the seeds into the holes I dug in a pretty uneven line – I can’t draw, cut, or obviously sow a straight line to save my life – and then after we covered up the seeds, she took her trowel and smacked the dirt with vigor and vim, flinging dirt up into the air. Ben cut lengths of trim wood to mark our rows and Madi scrawled the vegetable names with different colored Sharpie markers – gigantic E’s and A’s in the words peas and beans. Last but not least, we watered the garden, a rainbow shining in the spray…and Madi’s dirt streaked face getting a much needed spray too…
Will the garden grow? Who knows, especially considering the cold front coming in next week, but either way, it was an experience I don’t want to quickly forget…family fun day at it’s best…
